Monday afternoon, Republicans and Democrats reached a deal to keep the government open for three more weeks with an eye toward a deal on immigration policy.
Setting aside the amount of hyperbole and even fear-mongering to a certain extent from both sides over the weekend shutdown — it’s bad but it wouldn’t be shut down long enough for people to die — what this situation has once again exposed is how incompetent these people really are. How consumed they are by hyper-partisanship. How lost they are to the grip of lobbyists and special-interest donors.
It was sad and pathetic to watch all of this unfold late Friday night and Saturday morning. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of whom have talked about the consequences of a prolonged shutdown, seemingly had no time or no interest in sitting down with each other before noon Friday as the deadline rapidly approached. Yet they had time to take to the microphone in the Senate chambers after midnight and grandstand.
McConnell’s remarks were particularly disingenuous. He blamed Democrats for putting illegal immigration over renewal of the children’s health insurance program, as if he somehow is suddenly concerned about poor people losing health insurance — given that he had no problem shutting the government down in 2013 over funding for the Affordable Care Act. He blamed Democrats for putting illegal immigration over opioid treatment as if he and many others in Congress aren’t benefiting from money from big pharmaceutical companies, which are actively thwarting efforts to get that crisis under control.
President Trump, Vice President Pence and the White House were also ready to jump in, deciding to blame the Democrats for putting illegal immigration over the livelihood of military servicemen and servicewomen and their families.
That’s quite rich considering that on Saturday Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), one of five Democrats to vote for the stopgap spending bill Friday, proposed paying the troops now and McConnell blocked it.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), an Iraq War veteran who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army and who lost both her legs in combat, aptly took Trump to task for his and others’ assertion that the Democrats were holding the military hostage.
“I spent my entire adult life looking out for the well-being, the training, the equipping of the troops for whom I was responsible,” Duckworth said. “Sadly, this is something the current occupant of the Oval Office does not seem to care to do — and I will not be lectured about what our military needs by a five-deferment draft dodger.”
I doubt the White House was very moved by that statement but using their logic, McConnell’s decision to block the pay is putting politics over our military. I wonder how he sleeps at night.
Look, both sides are always going to constantly play the blame game in situations like this until something gets worked out.
The Democrats who want more permanent solutions on DACA (and CHIP for that matter) and protections for people under them aren’t convinced the Republicans are committed to crafting permanent solutions. That’s understandable given that McConnell and company have delayed and delayed on these issues and others like disaster relief for Puerto Rico.
But they must also recognize this approach makes them more politically vulnerable (hence why five Democratic senators in conservative states that Trump won handily in 2016) voted for the stopgap measure Friday. Immigration was one of the core issues that fueled Trump’s ascendancy, and racial and identity politics isn’t something Democrats should assume they’ll win on in November.
Republicans have their own vulnerabilities in the chaos rained down by a president who doesn’t know or understand when he should shut his mouth, when he should get out of his own party’s way on legislation. How many more utterly dumb things will he do and/or say between now and November that will make this most likely temporary shutdown a distant memory?
And with the Democrats dropping the shutdown, for now anyway, the attention should be squarely on the Republicans for their failure to act on DACA, a program an overwhelming majority of Americans support.
It shouldn’t be overlooked that Democratic and Republican senators had a bipartisan compromise in place on DACA, the roughly 800,000 people who are a part of it and the future of the other roughly 3 million “Dreamers” who are in the country.
Trump, boastful of his master negotiating and deal-making skills, had already publicly stated he was ready for both sides to bring him a deal and that he was willing to take the political heat for it. But when a group of senators from both parties attempted to bring him that deal, he retreated — because Tom Cotton and David Perdue and Stephen Miller had their feelings hurt — and went back to the strictly hardline mentality.
During previous shutdown incidents during the Obama presidency, Trump was quick to claim the onus fell on the president to lead. Now, he’s quick to shift blame anywhere but toward himself. While senators from both parties were attempting to talk this through over the weekend, he stuck to Twitter and the same old tired insults with no real leadership.
Trump’s rise to the top was also aided by his outsider status from Washington, which is paralyzed by partisanship. One could defend him by saying he underestimated this dynamic, but one would also have to acknowledge he’s become part of the problem.
And so, yes, a short-term deal was reached. But over the next three weeks, there will only be more grandstanding and excuses.
This climate will not change until we change our leadership, until voters recognize something has to be done differently.
Maybe we have no choice but to look to members of a future generation — ones who aren’t posting internet videos of themselves swallowing Tide pods — to lead.
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Scott Thompson is editor of the Barrow News-Journal. He can be reached at sthompson@barrownewsjournal.com.

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